"The candidate of people like us..."

presenceofmind.net ^ | 10/07/2004 | Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie

[Greg Swann]

"The candidate of people like us..."

by Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie

"I'm John Kerry and I approved this message."

You'll never guess who said that.

"People have asked me," the Candidate intoned, "Senator, why haven't you shared with the American people your secret plan to win the peace in Iraq?"

Beside the video camera, Manny Kant--the marketing maven who sneaks me into these things--murmured, "Good, good. Keep it coming."

"The truth is, I'm not the only one with secret plans. As you know, President Bush has a secret plan to reinstate the draft. Including young women. And their cats.

"The Bush administration has a secret plan to tax medicare--with tricky loopholes available only to the super-rich.

"Republican voters wonder why they should support John Kerry and John Edwards in this election. I'll tell you why. Because George W. Bush has a secret plan to shut down the Republican Party.

"And so the answer to that question is very simple. Why won't I share my secret plan to win the peace in Iraq? Because the Bush White House has a secret plan to outlaw all secret plans!"

And with that the Candidate just stood there, staring meaningfully into the camera, his face at once harsh and goofy and supplicating, like Eddie Haskell without the chutzpah.

"Is that it?" Manny asked.

"Isn't that enough? I thought I was kind of long."

"Okay, okay, we'll do something with it."

"I mean, don't you have cutaways and voiceovers and stuff like that?"

"We'll do something with it."

"Was my voice all right?"

"Stentorian, as always, Senator."

"And my face...?"

"...I'm going to go with... lugubrious."

"And my demeanor?"

"Your demeanor?"

"My mein. My manner. My... style, so to speak."

"Lachrymose. Lachrymose without parallel."

The Candidate scowled. Which took some doing; I don't think he has a full set of face muscles. "Do you think I don't know what those words mean?"

"I don't think that has anything to do with television," Manny muttered.

"I thought we'd do one with me fooling around with a football."

"I don't think that's such a good idea."

"No, I do this every day. You know, on the press bus. They take pictures of me throwing a football or a baseball, to let the people know I'm just a regular guy."

"Senator, with all due respect, you don't know the first thing about throwing a ball."

"What difference does that make?"

Manny Kant looked at the floor for a long time before he spoke. "The pictures work against you, that's what makes the difference."

The Candidate started to speak, by Manny held up his hand.

"No, hear me out. They take pictures of you pretending to play football, and it seems like it's all in good fun. But the average American doesn't see a regular guy having a good time after lunch. What he sees is a rich jerk pandering to him, when you don't even know how to hold the ball.

"No, wait, there's more. The boys on the press bus love those pictures, because they prove you're one of them. The press is in the tank for you, everybody knows that. But nobody knows the real reason why. It's because you're their boy, the closest they've come to getting one of their own into the White House. More like them than Clinton, than Carter, more like them than Gore, even.

"Don't you see? You get to high school or college and you realize that you're lousy at sports. Your head starts to swim in Algebra class, and by Trigonometry you've washed out of math. You're good with words, so good you could never survive with the dullards in the education department. What does that leave you? You can't be the rah-rah hero jock, you're too awkward. Not medicine, not science, not engineering--no aptitude for math. What's left? Law school, the social sciences--or journalism.

"You're their boy, Senator, the high water mark of mediocrity. It's not going too far to say that the history of the world since the dusk of the Enlightenment has been driven by men like you and your allies in the press--bitter, rancorous, resentful mediocrities undermining greatness for the crime of being beyond your uncoordinated grasp."

I expected the Candidate to be raging by now, but all he did was yawn.

"But wait," said Manny. "Here's someone you can beat. Here's someone you can all beat. A decent enough athlete, but nothing to write headlines about. A drunken frat-boy lout most of the time. And to top it all off, he's incapable of elocution, even, much less eloquence. If the sports gods and the math gods leave you feeling weak and small and pathetic, here's someone even more pathetic than you.

"But then you wake up one day and suddenly this wastrel Prince Hal has become regal King Harry at Agincourt, better at your own job than you could ever be, better than all but a handful in all of human history."

The Candidate scratched at his static forehead. "Are you trying to impress me with your education? Because I'll have you know that I studied in France."

"What I'm trying to do, Mr. Senator, is help you understand how to connect with your base."

The Candidate sat in silence for a long time. When he straightened himself up, Manny gave a nod to the cameraman.

"My opponent says that I will impose higher taxes on the rich, to take what they have simply for the sake of taking it," the Candidate confided to the camera.

"He says I'll hamstring the medical profession until doctors quit in disgust.

"My opponent insists that I will throw away our hard-won victory in Iraq for no better reason than that he won it and I didn't.

"He says I will invite terrorist acts far worse than those we saw on September the Eleventh.

"My opponent argues that my entire career has been devoted to chipping away at America's greatness in every way I could.

"But in the world of George W. Bush, there is no room for people like me. People like us.

"I'm John Kerry and I approved of this message because I am the candidate of people like us."

Manny Kant looked at me, not at the Candidate. He knows I know, he knows I've always known. I don't know if he brings me along out of guilty shame or a perverse pride.

"That's good," he said. "That's just the right tone. Let's try it again from the top."